


Penthesilea or The Secret Kiss

by Margot_le_Faye



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Dark, F/M, Humor, Romance, dramione - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-11
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2019-01-31 17:39:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12687051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Margot_le_Faye/pseuds/Margot_le_Faye
Summary: “And so a secret kiss, brings madness with the bliss, and I will think of this when I’m dead in my grave.” Tom Waites,AliceWritten for the 2010 Reverse Challenge at Hawthorn and Vine. Instead of artists creating pieces based on fic, authors created pieces based on artwork.  Please see warnings in note.





	Penthesilea or The Secret Kiss

**Author's Note:**

> From the original post at H&V:  
> The artist (the amazing riptey) asked for angst, which is sort of where I live. The lyric quoted above was her inspiration for the art, and the art and lyric (plus the lyric about waving a crooked wand) provided my inspiration for the story. Still, I’m not sure this is _quite_ what she had in mind. *G* This fic contains death and smut in extravagant, sometimes related, proportions. Dark!Fic through a lens of humor, flirting with the edge of squick territory.
> 
> Special Thanks to Sage for taking time from her busy schedule to look over the draft to give me the benefit of her opinion on a particular point.

_Bastards, bastards, bastards, the lot of them and oh, but they would burn..._

Malfoy funerals, even in the most trying of times, were always lavish affairs. The deceased were lauded to their graves by musicians performing dirges composed to honor the subject of the rites. Mourners, always in large numbers, bore witness to elaborate obsequies. Officiants gave blessings for the dead and orated fulsome eulogies. Malfoys were entombed in the ancient family mausoleum that lay behind the manor where their descendants whiled away the years before their own inevitable entombments. Dead Malfoys reclined in state upon marble biers next to the biers that held, or would hold, their wives. The mortal remains of Malfoys were dressed in the finest robes of shimmering silk or softest velvet, strewn with roses and sweet-smelling herbs beneath the mournful gaze of marble angels shedding alabaster tears. Malfoy funerary rites included the casting of certain spells upon the bodies of the deceased so that they did not vulgarly rot, but simply turned gently, decorously, and cleanly into dust, with nary a worm anywhere near the sacrosanct premises of the sepulchral vault to hasten the process. Decomposing was so dreadfully _common_ and even in death, Malfoys were never that.

These ancient and elaborate death rites were their birthrights, and the marital rights of their wives. Thus it had been for thirty generations, thus it might well have been in other, older, Malfoy vaults for thirty generations before that, and for thirty more beside, stretching backward through time to when the first wizard had grasped the first piece of wood to instinctively channel the power within himself into the first spell and to know himself better than his fellows. Or, as the family histories would have it, to know himself the first Malfoy.

What Malfoys were not, what they never had been and never would be, was dumped into cheap plywood coffins that had been knocked together from scraps, still dressed in the sweat-stained rags to which their prison issue garb of loose fitting trousers and long sleeved tunic had been reduced after weeks--months?--of wear. They were not thrown into muddy holes in common fields by a single gravedigger more intent on getting home to his supper than in making sure the grave being dug was a decent six-feet deep. The earth was not shoveled in on top of them without a single witness, or a single word being said. They were not abandoned without so much as a pile of stones to mark the final resting place.

It simply wasn’t _done._

Current evidence would suggest otherwise. Because Draco Malfoy could smell the rot and the earth and the dampness and he could hear the burrowing worms and the right wankers, the mother-fucking twats, the sodding pillocks he was going to tear into shreds with his bare hands had, in fact, done it. There had been no songs, no mourners, not a single, bloody word and he was still wearing the stinking rags he’d had on when she’d served him dinner. Which was the last thing he could remember before he’d woken up here. Assuming, of course, that he _had_ woken up here, that he’d woken up, at all.

If he could have moved a muscle, which he could not, he....could not have moved a muscle. There was no room because the bleeding arseholes, for whom he would be tearing newer, much larger and much bloodier arseholes, hadn’t even bothered to build him a proper coffin, just some damn mother-fucking narrow box.

He was going to slice off their nuts by inches and ram each blood-dripping piece down their hoarse-from-screaming throats. If he was feeling particularly charitable. Otherwise, he had something _truly_ unspeakable in mind for them. 

There was no air. He could not breath. He could not move. He could not see. There was nothing but imitation wood, damp earth, and utter dark.

It wasn’t time, he reassured himself, grabbing onto the thought and using it as bulwark against horror. Yes. That was all that was wrong. It wasn’t time. He would know if it were time. She had promised he would know and whatever else, and even though she was the very last person in the world he should trust, the fact was, he trusted her. He believed. He would know when it was time.

Of course, she had probably been lying, he thought morosely. If she had even been speaking at all. Because that had been his punishment. The Dementors had fled, and the Ministry wouldn’t sully itself by using the _Avada Kedavra_ even on a murdering Death Eater. The approved method of execution for those who had committed capital offenses was still called the Kiss. Now, however, instead of having one’s soul sucked out by the Kiss of a Dementor, one was done away with by a draught, or _kiss,_ of poison. Humanely, the poison induced hallucinations, which the Ministry piously claimed allowed the condemned to drift into a dream-state and not even notice his own life slipping away from him. Not so humanely, the hallucinations were usually more nightmarish than dreamlike, a secret the Ministry was careful to keep from the public. It hardly mattered. If anything, someone trapped in nightmare would be grateful for death. He supposed he ought to be, if this were a nightmare.

But he wasn’t, and he refused to believe that it was. He was not lying on some miserable bunk in the execution chamber of that miserable pile of stone in the North Sea while some duly authorized miserable sadist of a prison guard administered some duly approved loathsome brew that would...

_...stop his heart, stop his breath, stop him moving, stop his life..._

He was fairly certain that his heart was not beating, as no matter how hard he concentrated, he could neither feel nor hear it. His muscles did not respond to his commands by so much as a twitch. Breathing was right out, although smelling seemed to be well within his capabilities, as were hearing and feeling and thinking.

The logical conclusion was that he was dead and this was Hell. And, since it was an almost universally held opinion in the Wizarding world that Draco Malfoy deserved to be dead and in Hell, it wasn’t too surprising that the Ministry had decided to put him there. She was the only one who did not believe he deserved to be either dead or in Hell, and really, how much store could you set by the opinion of a dead woman, especially one you had murdered, yourself?

Not much, he decided. Then again, it wasn’t time yet. Either way, there was nothing he could do but lie in his grave and think. And of course there was only one thing to think _about_ or, only one worthwhile thing.

_Her lips had been cool against his own, cool and soft and tasting of springtime and newly budding plants and fresh rain and he wanted more of that taste and she obliged and her lips grew warm as she pressed them more fiercely against his own and he pressed as fiercely back and her little hands crept up slowly and his instinctively reached for hers so that their fingers were laced together and damn the sodding bars that kept him from taking her properly into his arms..._

That was why he would continue to believe that the only thing wrong was a simple matter of time, and never mind that this memory, too, might be a poison-induced hallucination. There were other memories, and surely _some_ of them had to be real. Like his memory of the first time she’d brought him supper.

He’d been lying down then, too, only it had definitely been on a miserable narrow bunk in a dank and filthy cell definitely located in that miserable pile of rocks in the North Sea. He had lain there with his eyes closed so that he didn’t have to see his surroundings, brooding over the events that had unfolded in the fashion of Greek tragedy to lead him step by inevitable and inexorable step from his life as the pampered scion of one of the wealthiest and most power families in the Wizarding world to his ignominious ending as a condemned criminal. There hadn’t been a trial yet, but that was a technicality. The verdict was already in: Murderous Death Eating Scum. Guilty, as charged.

“I’ve brought you dinner.”

His eyes snapped open, not because of the words, but because he recognized the voice of the one speaking them. He sat up quickly and took the two steps that brought him to the bars at the front of his cell, holding onto them because he rather needed the support.

Impossibly, it was her. She was standing in the corridor outside his cell in a pair of Muggle jeans with some sort of hooded top that looked like it was made of a soft fabric in a pale pink. The hood hung down her back, so that her brown hair was uncovered. He could see that she’d stuck her wand in her back pocket. There was something off about that wand, but he wasn’t sure what. In her hands, she held a chipped and cracked wooden tray on which a bowl of something unappetizing sat, along with a mug of something that probably wasn’t any tastier, a not-too-badly shriveled apple and a chunk of brown bread that looked like it _might_ not be moldy, just stale, with a pat of probably rancid butter. She held the tray out to him with both hands, but he didn’t immediately reach for it.

“You’re dead,” he said flatly. And, he ought to know, having killed her himself and having watched her body fall gracefully and bonelessly to the ground of the battlefield at his very feet. 

“Yes,” she agreed sourly. “The Wizengamot was kind enough to point out to me that _dead_ is indeed my official status and is taking its bloody time about investigating the grounds for a reversal of same. Do you know how difficult it is to file a petition to reverse a finding of death? Especially when, as a dead person, you have no legal standing to file a petition? Because you’ve got no legal rights at all? Because, legally, you’ve ceased to exist?”

Draco, still clutching the bars, eyed her warily as she continued to heap imprecations upon the Wizengamot and its love of something she called _red tape_ which did not, as he first thought, seem to be the Muggle equivalent of Spellotape, as its function appeared to be getting in the way of things rather than holding them together. Why Muggles would want to invent something so counterproductive was beyond him, but he let her go on in this manner for several minutes, simply because he needed to reassure himself that it really was she, Hermione Granger, standing before him, rather than rotting beneath some monument to war heros a stone’s throw from Dumbledore’s tomb. Finally, he interrupted her in order to get confirmation of what he regarded as the salient point, which he was still having trouble wrapping his mind around. 

“Granger, are you trying to tell me you’re not dead?” he demanded. “That I messed up the curse somehow?” Please, God. But he knew better than to be too hopeful, especially when he took a closer look at Hermione.

“Have I not just spent the past five minutes ranting about how bloody inconvenient it is to be dead?” she asked crossly, the tray in her hands rattling as she literally quivered with indignation.

“About being legally dead, yes,” Draco agreed. “But are you saying you’re only dead in the legal sense? Because I have to say, even if I hadn’t killed you myself and watched you--” _fall gracefully and bonelessly to the ground of the battlefield at his very feet_ “--watched you die,” he choked out, stumbling past the vivid memory, “one look at you now would have told me you were dead. Now matter how pretty a corpse you look, you still look a corpse.” The tray had gone very still in her hands and as she regarded him thoughtfully, head cocked to the side.

“But at least I’m a _pretty_ corpse?” she said with something like amusement.

“Well, I can’t say that ashen skin, pale lips and darkness ringing glassy eyes is a good look for you,” he began slowly, only to be interrupted by an unladylike snort.

“Oh, thanks ever so. Looked in a mirror lately, ferret?” 

“You didn’t let me finish,” he said quietly. “I also can’t say that your normally bushy hair looks better when it’s hanging limp and has lost it’s shine. But,” he hurried on, before she could stop him again, “even when it’s limp, your hair is still so much thicker and softer looking than the hair of any other girl I’ve ever seen. And as for being pretty...well, you might be dead, but you’re still recognizably you, still Hermione Granger, and....” He drew a deep breath, steeling himself to get the rest of it out. “Just because I never told you I thought you were pretty, never even admitted to myself that I was thinking it, doesn’t mean I _wasn’t_ thinking it. All the time, really.” 

“Were you?” she asked softly, then shook her head. “No matter. Since no one’s brought you a mirror, I should mention that your skin is currently ashen, your lips pale, your eyes are ringed with darkness--though I think less glassy and more dull--and your shining blond locks are neither shiny nor lock-like.”

“You think I have shining blond locks?” he said, straightening up from the bars, pleased that she had apparently been suppressing thoughts about him at the same time he’d been suppressing his own about her.

“They were,” she said dampingly. “Now they’re more like straw. You really should eat something,” she continued, offering the tray again. His eyes flicked to her left hand, and there it was, exactly where he’d left it, where his father had instructed him to place it in order to complete the ancient dark magic that Lucius assured his son would take the girl’s life. Her glassy eyes had lost none of their power of observation, because her gaze followed his and she sighed. “I should have Disillusioned that before I came in. I knew it would upset you. Well, go on and take the tray, then. I can’t Disillusion anything with my hands full.”

He reached up slowly to the small horizontal space set into the bars for exactly this purpose. She gave him a smile that would have been lovely rather than ghastly if she’d been alive, and slid the tray through the open space and into his hands.

“Is this poisoned?” he asked as he looked at the contents of the tray.

“Not yet,” she told him. He looked back at her. The ring had disappeared, though he hadn’t seen her use her odd wand, which was still in her back pocket. He hadn’t moved, but remained standing by the bars of his cell, the tray in his hands, looking at her. “Why aren’t you eating?” she frowned, which gave her (probably) dead face a positively terrifying appearance.

“I saw the spell hit you. I saw you die. I know you’re dead. I just don’t know why you’re so--lively. You’re too substantial to be a ghost,” he said, walking backward with the tray in his hands for two steps until he felt his legs hit the bunk and he sat down, balancing the tray on his knees. “You’re not green, so you can’t be a ghoul and you’re much too smart to be a zombie or inferi. Also, you’re not trying to eat me or my brains so the ghoul and zombie thing is right out. And you can’t be a vampire. You weren’t bitten by one.”

“No, I wasn’t,” she agreed, crossing her hands over her chest as she watched him fiddle with the tray on his lap, rearranging the cutlery but not attempting to eat.

“I killed you myself, so I should know,” he said, feeling a little defensive.

“Speaking of. How much do you know about the spell you used? And you really ought to start eating. They won’t let me stay long.”

“If they know you are here, why I am still in prison?” he said as he picked up a battered spoon and began poking about in the bowl for something that looked edible. “I mean, I’m here for murdering you, which, if you’re not one of the undead and you are up and walking about, I shouldn’t be, strictly speaking.”

“Neither of us should be here,” she said waspishly. “Dozens of us shouldn’t be here. We ought to be in Hogwarts for our seventh year, losing sleep over our N.E.W.T.s deciding where to apply for jobs, falling in love and having our hearts broken and then falling in love again. But the Ministry are utter berks and Voldemort is a right arse, so here we all are fighting and dying and being thrown into prison.”

“I’ve been thrown in. You seem to be here voluntarily,” he said, eying the contents of the bowl suspiciously, then deciding to take the chance.

“About as voluntarily as you,” she said. “The Ministry can’t have me larking about in public, so it was either _volunteer_ to do meal service at Azkaban, or _volunteer_ to remain in protective custody. In Azkaban.”

“Oh?” he said before taking a mouthful of a pathetic attempt to stew tough meat and stringy vegetables into something palatable. He swallowed the mess with a grimace. “Why don’t they want you _larking about,_ then?”

“Oh, honestly, Draco, you just said it yourself. If I’m not dead, they can’t hold you for my murder.”

“Assault?”

“Not when my wand shows I was casting hexes, stunning spells, jinxes and what not. You could have been acting in self-defense.”

“But I wasn’t,” he said bitterly, abruptly letting the spoon clatter down into his bowl, then putting his head in his hands. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “So, so sorry.”

He was. He had been from the moment it had happened. It was the moments before it happened that caused all the problems. At first, all he could see was that it was _Granger_ standing a few yards away from him on the battlefield, hexes, curses and jinxes flying from the tip of her wand in a rapid-fire shower of sparks and colored lights as she fought against his side. Or, the side he hadn’t been able to get away from. In that moment, it hadn’t mattered. There she was, the girl who had been driving him spare for years, who was making him barmy, and she was too busy fighting off his friends to notice him.

“Cover me,” he’d hissed to Vince and Disillusioned himself so that he could move with quiet and careful stealth toward her. As he walked, he slipped his hand into the inner pocket of his robe where his father had made him swear he would always keep it, against just such an opportunity as now presented itself.

_“Because I am truly sickened unto death of listening to you constantly prattle on about that worthless little Mudblood,” Lucius all but snarled as he tossed the bit of metal to his son, who caught it reflexively, and examined it warily._

_“It looks like--”_

_“Oh, for Merlin’s sake. The symbolism is identical. The unbroken circle of eternity, an eternal pledge. Just...a different sort of eternity.”_

_“And this will do what, exactly?” Draco asked, still not sure how placing a wedding ring, because that was what it looked like, on Granger’s finger was supposed to put her in her place._

_“Seal the spell,” Lucius said. “Wed her eternally to the dark.” So, he’d been right about what it looked like, Draco thought. Which made no bloody sense because there were far easier and quicker ways to put a period to someone’s existence than by engaging in elaborate spells that required ancient artifacts to complete. Some nice straightforward wand work would surely do the trick. He attempted to put that point to his father._

_“Wouldn’t a regular_ Avada Kedavra _answer just as well?” he asked._

_“Trust me. The results wouldn’t be nearly as satisfying,” his father said dryly._

_“Why have I never heard of this spell before?”_

_“There are aspects of this spell which are complex and could have deadly ramifications for the entire family, if done incorrectly.” Lucius gaze bored into that of his son. “I trust there’s no danger of that?” Draco drew himself up and nodded stiffly. Lucius gave a sour smile in return. “Excellent. Now, to answer your question, the Malfoy heir is kept in ignorance of the secrets of this spell until he turns thirty, unless circumstances warrant an earlier disclosure.”_

_“And the fact that Granger sends me right round the twist constitutes warranting circumstances?” Draco said doubtfully._

_“Hardly,” Lucius sneered. “I’m not telling you the secrets of the enchantment, after all. Just the broad outlines. But you must swear that you will use this spell, and no other, when you confront her. And you must also swear that you will use it on no one else, ever. No one, Draco. Am I understood?”_

_“Yes, sir,” Draco replied._

_“Very well,” Lucius said, pulling out his wand. “I’ll have your oath now.” Draco wondered if he wasn’t the only one Granger had sent round the twist, but this was his father, so he unhesitatingly gave his oath. Lucius sighed in relief and put his wand away. “Now, when you cast the spell, here is what you must do...._

Casting the spell had landed Draco first into Azkaban, and now into his unquiet grave. Even so, his father had been right. The results of the _Avada Kedavra_ would never have been as satisfying.

_The bars of his prison were wide, just not wide enough for him to slip out of or for her to slip in through. But wide enough for him to tilt his head just a little, to deepen the kiss. She gave a soft little sigh, parting her lips so he could slip his tongue between them, enter the sweet darkness, chase after the taste of rain and springtime. Wide enough for her soft breasts to brush against his chest, even around the intrusion of the bars. Wide enough for him to unlace his fingers from hers, to slip a hand through the bars to hold the back of her head, press it closer, and the other hand to slip through, caressing her waist, slipping around her back, not even thinking to reach for her wand, just pulling her close, but not close enough because of the damned bars..._

But back then, when he had crept across the battlefield, gaze fixed on Granger, the only thing in his mind was the triumph within his reach. He was about to pay out the annoying little Mudblood for always showing him up in class, for always helping Potter avoid every trap and trick Draco had managed to set up for him, for being everything she was not supposed to be, and putting the lie to all the differences that he had been raised to believe existed between those of differing blood.

For turning him into everything he was _not_ supposed to be. He was a Malfoy, and Malfoys were champions of all that was pure-of-blood and superior in every way. Malfoys were leaders, not followers. And of course Malfoys always came in first, in any endeavor they had ever undertaken.

Except that she had changed all that. Because she refused to be inferior. She was the swot who garnered house points for the Gryffindors by getting her hand into the air before their professors had even finished asking their questions, who had helped to keep Slytherin from winning the House Cup for six long years, and who had kept Draco from his proper place as top student in the year. 

So it was with unholy glee that Malfoy realized his Disillusionment spell had achieved its ends, and he was standing scarcely a foot away from Granger with her being never the wiser, still shouting out her jinxes and hexes while she fought oh, so valiantly, to defend her friends. The only thing he felt as he aimed his wand and began to whisper the incantation that Lucius had taught him was a fierce sense of joy.

And then she’d stiffened, and turned in the direction from which she must have heard his voice coming, even though everyone around them seemed oblivious to his presence, and she looked at him, looked right at him despite the concealing spell, her large brown eyes grown suddenly wide and her soft pink lips parted in a little _oh_ of distress.

A single instant between one word and the last, the final word that set the spell spinning outward from his wand in a shower of silver sparks. A single instant in which he saw her, really saw her, for the first time in his life.

Saw that her eyes were not mud-brown but honey-brown, that her lips were wide and soft and plump and pink and made for kisses, that her hair wasn’t bushy so much as a thick and rioting mass of tight brown curls alive with reddish and golden lights, saw that she was the perfect height to nestle right under his chin, and because the wind blew her robes about her form, saw that her figure was the perfect hourglass shape of the houris said to inhabit paradise, saw that she was, in fact, everything he had ever wanted or could ever want in a witch.

Saw that her eyes, staring into his despite the Disillusionment charm, reflected some of the same wonder he knew could be seen in his own, as if she, too, were seeing _him,_ seeing Draco Malfoy, rather than just the Slytherin prat who was always giving her trouble, for the first time.

Saw that her reaction to this sudden revelation was the same as his.

And then the final word of the spell was out of his mouth before he could think to stop it.

“Draco?” she whispered, the first time he’d ever heard his name on her lips.

“Hermione,” he’d instinctively responded even as the silver sparks flew from his wand to wrap around her in a gleaming net, and her eyes fluttered as she fought the useless battle to keep them open.

 _Penthesilea,_ he’d thought, the Queen of the Amazons. Her eyes had met those of Achilles in the moment the Greek hero had thrust his sword into her breast, slaying her. In that moment, they had fallen in love. He’d always thought that was a rotten story, and it was much more rotten now he was living it.

Draco stood frozen in horror until his father’s remembered words screamed through his mind, _deadly ramifications for the entire family_ and although he had a fleeting moment of thinking it would serve his father right, there was also his mother to consider, so he forced himself to do what he had to do because there was no other choice. He reached for Hermione through the silver net, which parted to allow him to grab her left hand and thrust the ring, platinum and etched with symbols in a language far more ancient than runes, onto the third finger, the ring finger, marrying her to death and darkness for eternity.

Well, except that she was standing right in front of him, so clearly, _something_ had gotten spectacularly bolluxed up.

In addition to his entire life, which had gotten spectacularly bolluxed up even as Hermione’s eyes had fluttered shut, and the silver net had tightened around her and she’d fallen gracefully and bonelessly to the battlefield at his very feet and his Disillusionment charm was broken and he couldn’t be arsed to care as he stood in the midst of his enemies having just slaughtered their beloved heroine.

The Ministry did not recognize it as a battlefield or as a battle. In their view, there was no war. Draco was not an enemy soldier entitled to the protections afforded to enemy soldiers in times of war. He was a criminal who had murdered an innocent girl who was only trying to defend herself and her friends from unlawful assault. Murderer. Death Eater. Scum.

Still guilty as charged, even if his supposed victim was tapping her foot impatiently because he was taking too long over his dinner.

“Apologize later,” she said. “Eat now.” He lifted his head from his hands.

“You shouldn’t care if eat,” he told her. “You should be wishing me as dead as I tried to make you.”

“Is that what you think?” she asked softly, coming closer to the bars. “That I should hate you? Wish ill on you?”

“You can’t wish more ill on me than I wish on myself,” he admitted bitterly, putting the tray aside, appetite gone, staring down at the stone floor of his cell, unable to meet her eyes.

“You’re not going to eat any more, are you?” she sighed.

“No.”

“Then come here.”

“Sorry?” he said, head snapping up to see her standing at the bars, holding onto them from her side the way he’d been holding onto them just a few minutes before.

“Come here,” she repeated. Possibly so that she could shove her oddly off-putting wand into his chest and hex him six ways from Sunday, but then again, if she wanted to do that, he owed it to her to let her. So he’d got slowly to his feet and shuffled over to the front of the cell, until he was standing right in front of her, with only the bars keeping them apart. “Let me show you how much ill I don’t wish upon you,” she said gently, tilting her head just so, in a manner that stopped his heart, and as her lids fluttered down over her glassy eyes, he realized the opportunity, the unlooked for, impossibly _wonderful_ opportunity she seemed to be offering, and he unhesitatingly took it.

And that was how he’d come to kiss her for the first time, even expecting her lips to be as cold as the corpse she looked to be, her breath as rank as the grave, the taste of her rot and corruption. He would kiss her anyway, because even a cold kiss of rank corruption would be ambrosial if it came from her lips, and it would be better to have the memory of such a kiss than never to have kissed her, at all. For the barest hint of an instant he thought she might have been as cold and horrific as he’d prepared himself for her to be, but that must have been mere imagination, because then, _then...._

 _...cool lips grown warm and the taste of springtime and the press of an undeniably warm body against his own and this was better than ambrosial, better than his dreams of what a kiss should be, better than Quidditch and magic and, God, but it was better than anything about being pure-blood had_ ever _been and she gave a soft and breathy kind of sigh and pressed closer as if she wanted to give him more and Merlin’s bones, but he wanted to take it and damn the mother-fucking bars that were in his way..._

He groaned when she broke the kiss, not wanting to let her go. Then he blinked. She looked...like she had a little more color. Maybe she was flushed from their kiss? Because her skin seemed almost pink and her eyes were a little more clear and even her hair seemed a bit more...something.

“We don’t have much time,” she said. “Please, Draco, I know it’s awful but finish the food on your tray. You need it to keep up your strength.” He was about to protest that what he really needed was another snog, but a sudden wave of dizziness made him stop and think just how long it had been since he’d bothered to eat anything, or managed to get any sleep, so he just nodded agreement and went back to sit on his bunk.

“If it makes you happy,” he said, picking up the tray and setting himself to finish up a meal that was suddenly a lot more appealing than it had been a few minutes ago. Tasteless as ever, but he forced it down, stale bread, weak tea and all, saving the apple for last. It was a tad on the soggy side, but edible, and he polished it off in a few bites. “There. All done,” he said patting his mouth with the cheap paper napkin.

“Good boy,” she purred. “Now, come get your reward.” He grinned, and hurried over to the bars.

_Instantly hot, scorching, and the taste no longer anything as innocent as springtime. Soft lips, delicate tongue, wine-sweet and drugging and damn the bars to hell and back..._

Hermione reluctantly pulled away from him, telling him to give her the tray back because she had to go.

“But I’ll be back,” she promised with a slow smile curling her plump pink lips. “Soon. Meanwhile...pleasant dreams.”

Very pleasant dreams. Not immediately, because just thinking about the fact that Hermione was somehow _not_ dead at his hands was enough to keep him awake, wondering what could possibly have gone right with the spell his father had made him swear an oath he would use. Because Lucius Malfoy _never_ made mistakes, not with magic, no matter how spectacularly he could cock-up his political choices. So, the mistake had not been in Lucius’ choice of spell. But it couldn’t have been in Draco’s execution of said spell, either, because, damn it, Draco was a good wizard. No, he was a mother-fucking _great_ wizard, one who’d mastered the art of flying almost before he could walk, one who was able to grasp the intricacies of spells, and charms, the delicate nuances of potions, the rigors of transfiguration, let alone the discipline of arithmancy and runes, as soon as the concepts were revealed to him by his professors or in his texts. He knew he’d mastered the words of the spell and the wand motions required to enact it, because he’d repeated them to Lucius’ exacting specifications until Lucius was satisfied that he wouldn’t cock it up.

So, how had he?

Because something had clearly not worked the way it was supposed to, and while Draco was inexpressibly relieved that it hadn’t, and that Granger was still around, not terribly much the worse for wear, it was driving him spare not to know why the spell hadn’t done what his father had expected, even insisted, it would do.

The mystery seemed insoluble. Certainly, he hadn’t solved it by the time sleep finally claimed him, and even in dreams the question seemed to run through his fevered mind.

“Stop worrying about it, it’s not time yet,” she said softly. He opened his eyes to see her standing before him again, on this side of the bars, thank Merlin. He smiled at her, not bothering to say anything because she was only a dream and therefore didn’t need him to say anything. Although he did think he should tell her how pretty she looked in her long white gown with it’s trailing sleeves, even if the hem seemed a tad on the ragged side

“Silly goose,” she giggled. “You have no idea what it is, do you?”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s beautiful. You’re beautiful,” he said, holding out his arms. He was still lying on his back in his bed, not bothering to get up because this was a dream and she wasn’t really here, anyway.

“I hope you still think so on the twentieth,” she said, floating toward him, or seeming to, so gracefully did she move in her lovely white dress.

“What’s the twentieth?” he asked as she reached the bed and knelt on it, crawling up along his side, rather like a sexy white kitten, until she’d reached his arms and allowed to him pull her into his embrace.

“Time,” she said, leaning over him, lowering her head, and...

_...lips as soft as rose petals and warm as summer and delectable as honey, intoxicating as wine. He could drown in the taste of her and lose himself in the silken feel of her skin, her curtain of hair drifting across his suddenly naked chest like a second caress. Somehow the rest of him was naked and all of her was naked, but then, this was a dream so why shouldn’t they both be naked, skin to skin with each other, a sweet tangle of limbs and tongues, kisses and caresses? Why shouldn’t he fill his hands with the soft bounty of her breasts, make her moan when he gently thumbed the nipples, rubbed the head of his cock against her sensitive nub, foreplay and promise, so that she writhed against him, giving him the most delicious friction? She whimpered, her nails scratching down his torso, abrading his own nipples, not harshly, but rather the way a kitten would scratch with tiny claws. He moaned in delight, tried to move them so that she was beneath him rather than at his side, but then she moved, the sly minx, pulled away from him with some nonsense about it not being time yet and he was about to tell her to sod the fucking time before she giggled and pounced, her mouth most wickedly and delightfully distracting him from his complaints, and really, giving him nothing to complain about as he groaned and grabbed onto her thick and soft and shining hair while she used that swotty little mouth to do the most delectable, dirty things to his manhood, sucking him down whole despite his girth and length, so that he was surrounded by wet heat, her tongue laving him deliciously, her teeth scraping judiciously. She unmanned him. He was spilling inside that divinely talented mouth within moments, in a paroxysm so deliriously prolonged, so all-consuming, so entirely draining, that he could barely stay awake afterward, his eyes falling shut upon the decadent picture of a naked Hermione Granger sprawled at his feet, languidly fingering her clit as she licked his seed from her lips..._

He had been surprised, waking the morning after that particular dream, to find that he had not further soiled his grubby prison-issue trousers with the nocturnal emission he _knew_ he’d had. Perhaps there was some sort of spell on the prison itself to take care of such embarrassments. The Wizengamot were a right bunch of prudes, after all. Shrugging, Draco got out of his bunk and used the limited facilities at his disposal to clean up.

She brought him breakfast, something that was closer to oatwater rather than oatmeal, which he ate uncomplainingly and in record time because he rather suspected that he’d be getting the same reward as last, which he certainly did. For that, he was willing to force down as much of the disgusting prison fare as she wanted him to eat.

And so began the routine of their days, Granger feeding him, snogging him, wishing him pleasant dreams and making spectacular nightly appearances therein, which never failed to get him off despite the fact that the little tease never let him do what he really wanted, never let his cock inside the tightest, hottest, most delectable pussy in the world. He knew it was the tightest, hottest, most delectable pussy in the world for a fact, because while his cock might not have been permitted inside, she hadn’t objected to letting him slip a single finger within that little bit of paradise. She let him do enough other things that he was hardly in a position to complain, even aside from the whole trying-to-turn-her-into-a-corpse-for-real thing.

She showed him how to touch her, the way she liked her nipples to be teased and her clit to be flicked. She let him put his mouth wherever he pleased, so that he could lap up copious amounts of her sweet, hot honey as she reached her pleasure. And, as she’d shown him in that first dream, she certainly knew what to do with her own mouth. Her hands and fingers proved to be equally skilled, and on certain rare occasions, she would rise over him as he lay on his back, rubbing her dripping center teasingly over his aching cock, still not letting him inside, but managing to use enough of a sweet, gliding pressure to bring them both a messy, delirious release.

Only once had the harmony between them ever been broken, not in their dreams, but as he ate his supper.

“We’re getting closer,” Hermione had started. “I’ve managed to keep the Wizengemot from rushing things, but in two more days, it will be time.”

“You keep saying that it will be time,” he said between bites of something that had probably been a decent chicken before it had been boiled to a flavorless pulp. “Time for what?”

“Time for the dark moon,” she said. “That’s when it has to happen and don’t ask me _what_ has to happen, Draco, because I can’t tell you. But I promise you, I _promise_ you, you _will_ know when it is time, and you _will_ know what you have to do.”

“All right” he said amiably. “If you say so.”

“It isn’t me saying so,” Hermione said distractedly. “Your father wants you to know--”

“My _father?_ ” Draco fairly roared, the tray flying as he got angrily to his feet, all but hurling himself at the bars of his cell. “My father? He wants something? _He’s bloody well dead and in the family vault along with my mother, you daft cow, so how can he possibly_ want _anything?_ Did you think the guards would let that bit of news pass without hurling it at my face, taunting me with my inability to attend the funeral, see they had the proper rites?” Hermione wasn’t in the least bit put out by his show of temper.

“I _know_ they’re dead, you prat,” she huffed indignantly. “And it took a bit of work persuading the Headmistress to use her influence so they got the full Malfoy rites and the proper entombment, let me tell you, when the Ministry was all for a common grave in Potter’s Field.” Draco shuddered at that horrific piece of news. “That doesn’t change the fact that your father wants you to know how important it is that you get things right, that you--”

This admonition from beyond the grave from a father whom he had never been able to please in life proved too much for Draco, who tore at his hair and howled. Hermione simply shook her head and pulled out her loathsome little wand, which she used, with great effort, to _Reparo_ the broken dishes and _Evanesco_ the spilled food from his supper tray, waiting for him to regain some semblance of calm. Oddly enough, it was watching her work with that hideous piece of wood that did the trick. The thing was crooked and withered, looking less like a proper wand and more like a piece of driftwood randomly collected from the shore and put to use channeling magic. To judge by Hermione’s fierce concentration, the feeble light it emitted, and the sluggish movement of the dishes putting themselves back together and the food only gradually fading away, it did so with indifferent success.

“What the hell is wrong with your wand?” Draco asked.

“Side effect of the spell,” she said stiffly. “So I’ll thank you not to criticize.” Which, naturally, made him feel terribly remorseful for his temper so that he most humbly begged for her forgiveness which she wasn’t terribly reluctant to give, after all. A pleasant snogging session ensued, and she left without telling him exactly what it was his verifiably dead father wanted him to know.

That had been two days earlier. This evening, she’d been fretful when she brought his dinner, pacing before his cell and all but wringing her hands, muttering something he couldn’t quite catch about _hidebound idiots_ and _least of what they deserve_ and most mysteriously _pay out that sodding bitch once and for all._

He meant to ask her what it was all about, after the snogging, of course. Except that there wasn’t any. He dutifully finished his meal, patted his mouth with the napkin as always, and brought the tray to her with an expectant smile. She stopped her pacing and took the tray, but instead of placing it to the side and approaching the bars of his cell, as she usually did, Hermione simply stood and looked at him mournfully. He found himself content to simply watch her, because she was so beautiful, had been growing more and more beautiful every time he saw her, with her curling hair and soft pink lips and the light tint of pink to her cheeks and her sweetly curved figure and her warm brown eyes. But he was, oddly, so tired. Even opening his mouth seemed a task that was beyond him, and keeping his eyes from falling shut required monumental effort.

“I’m sorry,” Hermione said. “Truly, I am. But it was, this time, you see. Anyway, your mother said it wouldn’t hurt, and I believe _her_. Just remember that I’ll be waiting for you...”

And then the world had gone out of focus, slid away into the dark, into which had come the noise of nails pounding and men cursing and ugly jokes and greedy speculation about vaults in Gringotts with no one to claim them and the smell of rot and earth and the sound of burrowing worms. Draco Malfoy concluded that he was indeed in his grave, and while he could think about his beautiful Hermione and his beautiful dreams of the things he’d imagined doing with her, he eventually realized that no, this was it, he was dead and in Hell as all the world was convinced he well ought to be.

And then had come the anger, pure rage, as he contemplated again the path that had led him to this place, and what he concluded, rotting there in the dark, was that it had all been lies and stupidity and hypocrisy and ignorance. He was furious that his father was dead, furious that all that long line of noble forebears were peacefully and decorously turned to dust in the marble vault from which he alone had been excluded, because he wanted to wake them up, resurrect them and scream at them for their blind stupidity and arrogant folly, for getting it so horribly wrong and seeing to it that he had got it so horribly wrong. Because she wasn’t what they said she was, said she had to be, not inferior to anything or anyone. Pure-blood, what a joke that was, and as Draco’s brain boiled over with rage, he wished he had just five minutes to prove it to them, five minutes in the family vault to grab his father’s pristinely decayed shinbone, surely decorously freed of flesh by now in the usual spell-enhanced manner, maybe if he grabbed that vestige of Lucius’ mortality and shoved it up the glorious cunt of his beloved, gave it a good twist, so the old bastard could feel for himself just how inferior she wasn’t, then maybe grabbed her and fucked her raw while rolling around in the dust of his ancestors, maybe that would pay the bastards out for their unforgivable idiocy in championing the Dark Arts and Dark wizards and all the other darkness that had swallowed whole the last of the line and snuffed out the name of Malfoy forever and might, for all he knew, be about to swallow the entire damned world.

The image of what he would do with Hermione was so pleasing that the rage boiling over in his brain boiled further, boiled into his veins and along his limbs and into his fiercely burning heart.

He could move again. And it was time.

Whatever the myths say, and however much people want it to be otherwise, the simple truth is that a living human being who has been buried, by mistake or malice aforethought, in a plain wooden coffin with six feet of earth piled in on top of him, cannot, no matter how strong or how motivated, break through the wood before suffocating from lack of air, cannot claw through the dirt without choking on it. Someone who is buried alive in such a grave is going to die in it, unless rescued by outside forces.

Assuming the person in the grave is merely human.

Draco howled as he sent his fist through the top of his coffin, splintering the weak, cheap wood, spitting out the dirt that caved in on him, clawing his way inch by wretched inch through soil and small stones and crawling things that had thought to make a meal of him and which could not crawl away from him fast enough before he crushed them in his rage to reach the surface where he could feel her waiting for him.

Dark of the moon, and the darkness of the grave was only a little more absolute than the night into which he finally broke free with a howl of triumph. She threw her head back, shivering in delight at the sound, something he felt rather than saw. Then he set his hands on the edge of earth he’d broken through to and hauled himself the rest of the way to the surface standing in the desolate, unmarked field in which they’d thought to consign him to oblivion. He looked around, not really surprised that, despite the lack of light, he could see perfectly well, lip curling in disdain at what was never going to be his final resting place. And then he turned to more pleasing vistas, his glorious bride, waiting in that lovely gown she’d worn in his first dream which had not been a dream, a gown he now recognized as the cerements of the grave, as well as her bridal raiment. That ugly excuse for a wand was held loosely between her fingers, and he frowned in displeasure. She didn’t need it anymore. A single thought, and his bride raised her brow in amusement as a pile of ash drifted through her fingers. With a wicked smile and no need for words, he extended his hand. Laughing, she came forward to take it, and then she was in his arms and this kiss was better, darker, hotter and nothing of sweetness, only fire and need and hunger. But even before she broke it, he knew what remained to be done. With her still in his arms, and not needing a wand, either, he Apparated them away, to the nearest place he could feel a body of water cold enough and deep enough for what they required.

They arrived at the bottom of a lake, Hermione’s hair streaming behind her in the water as he pulled her into his arms for another of those delicious, drugging kisses he wanted to lose himself in, and would when there was time. For now, there had been earth until he’d broken through to air and now there was water, and soon there would be fire, but that would be last. He vanished his clothing, and pulled his bride into his arms, leaving her cerements. Morbid or not, they suited her. Long moments later, moments spent entirely in kisses, when he felt the lake had scoured the feel and scent of Azkaban from his skin and the dirt of the grave from his hair, he Apparated them again, casting a quick drying spell, so that her hair was soft and curling with no trace of damp although he would have liked leaving her cerements alone, as they had become so deliciously transparent from the water.

“Another time,” she said, pulling him forward again. “I’m starving. You need to eat something. And look. I’ve brought you dinner.” She stepped away from the catafalque holding the bones of his great-great-grandfather--because of course they’d Apparated to the Malfoy tomb, where else could he complete the ritual?--to show him dinner.

Dolores Umbridge was tied hand and foot, whimpering on the floor of the tomb, her toad-like face blotchy from tears, her beady little eyes red, wide and rolling in terror.

Thank Merlin Hermione had gagged the bitch.

“I wasn’t bitten by a vampire,” he pointed out, even as the hunger stirred in his belly.

“You’re not a vampire,” Hermione agreed. “But you still need to eat.”

“You do realize that, hungry as I am, I’m probably going to kill her?” he asked, just to be sure.

“Rather the point,” Hermione said dryly. “Much more humane that letting the Dementors have her which is, ironically, the punishment for abusing the authority of the Ministry to willfully and with malice aforethought set a Dementor on an innocent citizen. That’s what she did to Harry, you know.”

“Ah,” Draco smiled knowingly. “So it’s more than just concern for my well-being that motivates you.”

“Are you complaining?” she smiled back.

In response, he set hands to either side of Dolores Umbridge’s head and began to suck not blood, but life-force from her, draining her of energy and vitality until she was a desiccated dried up little husk, looking more like a mummy that had been dead for centuries, than a newly deceased witch. Draco dropped the disgusting thing on the floor and turned to take his beautiful bride into his arms once more. 

Hermione wasn’t a vampire, either. Or, rather, she was, but of a very specialized kind, one that could only feed from her mate. And, not blood. That’s why she’d been so much prettier after their snogging sessions: because after he’d eaten, she’d been taking her nourishment from him, through their kisses.

She was about to have a lovely big meal, since it was time to consummate their marriage.

He was rather miffed to find all the catafalques occupied, as if they’d known exactly how many generations it would take to fulfill the prophecy which, being what they were, they probably had. 

Then Hermione banished her cerements to another corner of the tomb and he found he didn’t much care. She pulled him down to the marble floor where worms had never dared to come and nothing so common as dust or dirt had ever been allowed to settle and she opened her legs for him at last and he knelt between them and there was the ring glowing beautifully on her finger, no longer Disillusioned, the ring that had married her to death and darkness in the person of Draco Malfoy and to more power than that to which any mere wizard could ever dare aspire.

Which was a lesson he was going to personally teach that arse who called himself the Dark Lord, but not until he was through with his wife.

Which he didn’t plan on being for hours. 

She didn’t seem to have any objection to that plan.

So, Draco stretched out over her and she wrapped her legs around his waist and dug her heels into his arse as he slid inside her, past the barrier that neither of them was concerned about until he was seated deep inside her and kissing her, losing himself in another heated kiss as he was losing himself in her heated flesh.

That was how the Malfoy monument to eternity became the monument to another kind of eternity, Draco Malfoy muddying the purity of his ancestors, rolling with his adored bride in the dust of the ages, Mudblood and pure-blood sullying up the bloodlines now that they were all so very much beyond anything so plebian as blood.

Draco Malfoy fucked his gorgeous wife for all he was worth, fueled by the life-force of that waste of a witch who was never going to need it again, anyway. He sank into Hermione, setting a slow and torturous rhythm that had her raking her nails down his back until it was torn to shreds, his name spilling from her lips in paeans of praise when he stoked her pleasure, and curses a sailor would blush to hear when he denied her. Which wasn’t for long, could never be for long, he would deny her nothing, he would lay the world at her feet and chain the sun and the moon to the throne in which he would see her seated.

For now, he was content to make her scream.

Hours later, Hermione once again lay at his feet, licking his seed from her delectable mouth and languidly fingering her clit, as more of his seed slid from between her swollen nether lips. He was tempted to use the power he wielded to ensure that his seed took root, right now, but knew how his wife would react to that kind of high-handed disposition of her body, so, with an effort, he refrained. There would be time enough for that later, he thought, watching appreciatively as Hermione began to undulate as she built her pleasure. Enchanting as that picture was, there were other enchantments starting to stir. With a mental flourish, Draco sent a frisson of power over her flesh, watching smugly as she shuddered in what was, regrettably, going to be her final orgasm of the evening. While she lay boneless and panting on the floor, he summoned her cerements, and tossed them to her, frowned at the remains of the witch who had incurred his bride’s displeasure, before banishing said remains to the empty grave he’d recently crawled out of, little though she deserved the honor. Then, as Hermione languidly pulled her cerements over her body so that she was as decently covered as the current circumstances required, he healed his shredded back, then conjured a robe of finest silk and belted it about himself. Just in time. The ancestors were waking.

“A Mudblood, eh?” chuckled Ettiene du Malfoi, from the first bier, brushing rose petals and sweet-smelling herbs from his robes of softest velvet. Draco’s anger, which had been assuaged by the delights of the marriage bed--so to speak, as there hadn’t been an actual bed involved--roused again at this insult to his bride, and he remembered his grievance against his forebears for their pigheaded views on Dark Arts and the whole blood purity thing. He considered making a start on his imminent ascendency over the world by burning the lot of them therefrom, and was about to gather his power to do so when the gentle touch of Hermione’s hand on his shoulder calmed him and made him hesitate “Never saw that coming.” Ettiene concluded, with a beaming smile at Hermione. Draco decided they could live. For now.

“We weren’t meant to, great-grandfather,” Ailinor of Malfoi, nee de Gaunt, said from seven biers down, shaking out her skirts of shimmering silk.

“No, no, I suppose not,” Ettiene allowed jovially. “Still, got to admit it’s a great joke on us.” This comment considerably mollified Draco, who decided he’d probably done the right thing in not committing several dozen generations worth of parricide just yet. “So, then, boy,” Ettiene continued, turning his attention to his last descendent while rubbing his beringed hands in anticipation. “Who’s on the menu tonight?”

“Hmmm,” Draco said. “Father, do you have any objection if I eat Voldemort myself, or should I save some for you? Oh. And Scrimgeour?”

“Feel free,” Lucius said magnanimously, helping Narcissa to rise from her own catafalque. 

“Are you sure that won’t give you indigestion?” Narcissa fretted. Draco considered that point, especially as he’d had Dolores Umbridge for starters. The combination was pretty vile, he had to admit. Then he shrugged.

“Worth the risk,” he said. His mother nodded, accepting his choice. “Right then, Voldemort and the Death Eaters first, then the Ministry,” Draco instructed. “If we do it the other way round, we’ll leave a power vacuum and I don’t want anyone getting any ideas.”

“Excellent strategy,” Apollonius of Malfoy said approvingly, adjusting the rapier with which he’d been buried so that it hung comfortably from his hip.

“But you can’t eat Arthur Weasley,” Hermione said. “Or, I suppose, Percy. At least, you can’t eat Percy tonight.”

“Do you have a list for us, my dear?” Arabella Malfoy said, inspecting the dancing slippers on her feet and pleased to find that her daughter-in-law had made sure she was wearing the right ones. “La, I am quite faint from lack of nourishment, so do tell us quickly. I vow, I should be quite sunk in spirits an we did aught to harm one of your bosom bows by mistake.”

“Thank you, _belle grand-mère,”_ Hermione returned politely, and with a thought conjured a list. It wasn’t very long. But then, hungry though everyone was, they didn’t need to kill in order to sufficiently nourish themselves. The other list, the one of people to be done away with entirely was an even shorter one, consisting of Voldemort, a few key Death Eaters, and certain select members of the Ministry of whom Dolores Umbridge had already had the dubious honor of being the first.

After all, the damned war had gone on long enough, with enough innocent people killed and enough innocent lives ruined. Time to put a stop to that nonsense and get things moving in the right direction.

And so it would begin, the cleansing of the Wizarding world and the gathering of the reins of power, true power, into the hands of the only ones fit enough to wield it. Because in the end blood didn’t matter and Hermione’s didn’t matter because it was all beside the point. She was the only thing that _did_ matter.

She was a Malfoy.

Draco turned to face the sealed doors of the family vault, working his will upon them so that they flung themselves open. He could feel other openings of other tombs, tombs built before the family left France for England, or Rome for Gaul, Egypt for Rome, Sumer for Egypt. He grinned wickedly. There was about to be one hell of a family reunion. It was time for them to take their true place in the world, the place that had been meant for them since the first wizard had grasped the first piece of wood to instinctively channel the power within himself into the first spell and know himself better than his fellows: a Malfoy.

The ritual was all but concluded, with only one final step to take to cement their power and their hold on the world. Earth had been vanquished, air had been won, water had been subsumed. Draco Malfoy pulled his wife into his arms and kissed her ravenously, visions of the destruction to be wrought upon Voldemort and the Ministry dancing in his brain.

It was time for fire.


End file.
